Maison Dieu

A few months ago, a friend sent me a link to a rather strange website. www.28dayslater.co.uk/ It's run by a group of urban explorers in the UK, although there are occasional postings from elsewhere. These people are not interested in vandalism, but in recording history before it is lost. They have a slogan "Take nothing with you, leave only footprints." As a former archaeology student (many moons ago) I find it fascinating to see the stages of decay in various buildings. It makes you understand what some of the much older sites must have gone through before they became piles of rubble. Some of the photographs posted are incredibly beautiful.


Others are incredibly sad. Hospital wards which have witnessed so much human drama lie empty and forgotten. Schools, whose hallways once echoed with the cries of countless children, are abandonned to the elements. And churches, where generations of the faithful participated in worship and in the rites of passage, no longer resound with praise.

Maison Dieu Church, which, until the early 1980's housed a congregation of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, is a landmark in Brechin, Scotland.
It was designed by George Washington Browne and built between 1890 and 1891. Browne designed many homes in Scotland, several churches, a few banks, and the operating theatres in the old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Many of his buildings have octagonal belfries.


According to those who recently investigated the church, the building is in poor condition. It has numerous leaks and is infested by pigeons. Apparently, when they gained access there was a huge clamor as hundreds of pigeons took flight and started circling inside the sanctuary. The floors are carpeted with feathers and droppings. The smell is almost unbearable. This is what the house of God looks like only 118 years after it was built.





We have the misfortune, or the opportunity (depending on how you look at it) to live in an era in which the tide of faith is ebbing. Abandonned churches, like Maison Dieu, bear silent testimony to the decline of the Gospel in Western Europe. The photographs are sobering, an affront to those of us who spend our lives seeking to advance the Kingdom, a slight on the name of God.





In Old Testament days, when the exiles returned from Babylon to Jerusalem, they lived for many years in sight of the ruined temple. They repaired their homes and workplaces, but the house of God remained as a haunt for wild foxes and birds of prey. It took a spiritual revival, under Ezra and Nehemiah, for the people to be galvanised into action. Perhaps it will take a revival before we rise up and rebuild the house of the Lord.





The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Matthew Arnold 1822-1888